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PAUL GERARD BERTHOLET
Paul Bertholet, a native of Providence, R.I. was encouraged to paint from an early age by his father and persuaded to give up his Saturday mornings in favor of children's art classes at the Rhode Island School of Design. Paul attended Rhode Island College where he studied Art and Anthropology. Once convinced of pursuing a career in the visual arts, he transfered to his formative roots at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he studied Illustration under such luminaries as Chris Van Allsburg and David Macaulay. He had the opportunity to copy masterpieces of Corot, Monet, Frank Benson and Charles Hopkinson in the RISD Museum. His oil studies on a winter session trip to Mexico his senior year demonstrated the influence of those masters and established the tone of his life work. He was a recipient of the RISD Alumni Scholarship and a Doyle Dane Bernbach Scholarship, receiving a BFA in Illustration in 1986. Paul lived in Los Angeles during the apocalyptic nineties witnessing the riots, the fires, the floods, and the earthquake. But while in LA, Paul reveled in the consistent California sun and successfully captured its intensity in a series of open-air paintings of Venice and Topanga Canyon that were well received within the Venice community and in private collections. He was represented by Gallerie Michael on Rodeo Drive and had a solo exhibit at the Sandbox Gallery in Venice Beach. He still paints and shows in LA today. Paul's Los Angeles experience also included decorative painting and mural projects for such clients as movie producer John Davis, industrialist Lee Iacocca, and the Saudi Oil Minister. One project for a Swiss client was sited on a private island in Bermuda and involved an 8 x 28 foot rain forest mural. Another trompe l'oeil project brought him to the home of an international financier on the shores of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. Paul is currently represented by Gallery 5800 and Rentz Gallery, in Richmond, Va. He has painted portraits for The Homestead Hotel and Historic Christ Church, and has many paintings in private collections, including Fleet Bank, G Tech Corporation, and Capitol One. He is actively engaged as a muralist, landscape painter, and portraitist. He and his wife, Virginia, reside in Richmond.
Over 100 paintings in private collections, including Fleet Bank and G-Tech Corporation.
I'm constantly thinking about painting within the context of the seen world, hunting for images and scouting out new neighborhoods and undiscovered locales that might give me the right combination of intriguing compositional elements and light qualities. Some of the best possibilities are found not far from my home or studio. These vignettes that I habitually overlook while I am busily occupied in my daily groove, are finally discovered when I slow down enough to look. Other times it's necessary to get at least a thousand miles away, out of my rut, to another geographic area with a completely different landscape and light in order to shock my senses into seeing differently. Simply put, at times I have to make myself see life like a tourist or a child, in order to adequately call attention to the wondrous. It is the challenge of open-air, or plein-air painting, to capture that evasive atmospheric effect, and the process is as rewarding and as valuable as the end result; an active meditation and vehicle for heightened perception that connects and keeps me grounded in the moment. If I'm stuck in my head, or any where else but here, the end result will reveal my inattention. In addition to this, I love the way light hits the side of a building, and the places where the man-made meets nature. Lately I've been drawn to the empty space between things, the cool passive shadow areas, the resting places between areas of bright activity. When the finished product is successful, I have a painted gem, a memento documenting a fleeting luminous moment, a recorded history made from marks on a surface.
"Right now a moment in time is fleeting by! Capture its reality in paint! To do that we must put all else out of our minds. We must become a sensitive recording plate...give the image of what we actually see, forgetting everything that has been seen before our time." |